Baseball is Back!

A Very Loud Lunch

Most of you know me as someone with a very subdued appetite, someone who exercises the most noble restraint when it comes to eating unhealthy foods, someone who only ever eats dessert to be polite to the provider of that superfluous third course.

Ha!

Actually, if you know me at all, you know that I'm someone with a sinfully large appetite for all food, especially the unhealthy ones; you know that my Achilles' heel is not located at the base of my leg, but rather in the back of my mouth, where my sweet tooth resides. Rather than eating dessert only to be polite, I'll finish it faster than anyone but my younger brother, and I might just help myself to some of yours after you politely decline to finish it.

Where am I going with all this? Well, Thursday afternoon offered me the chance to expose this side of myself to my mentor, Rawlings, and the team lead (manager) of Sustaining, Tallant. Apparently, Tallant was supposed to take Rawlings and me out to lunch back in January when I first arrived at Disney, as a "welcome-to-the-company" festivity. Ironically, Tallant himself was brand new to the department, and had no time to take us out for lunch. Hence, it was postponed till just last week; but it was well worth it. Two words:  company pays.

Had I known that Tallant wouldn't be pulling from his own pocket for the meal, I might have chosen the steakhouse in the Canada pavilion of World Showcase. But instead I chose the Whispering Canyon Cafe at the Fort Wilderness Lodge, right across the lagoon from our office in the Magic Kingdom!

After a relaxing boat ride across the lagoon, we arrived at the beautiful resort hotel and made our way to its lobby, over which our destination looked. (The hotel looks very similar to the craftsman style of the Grand Californian in Disneyland; as a matter of fact, it was designed by the same architect!) It was about this time that Tallant informed us he wouldn't be paying personally for our meal, and that we could therefore order whatever we darn well pleased.

Ask and ye shall be given. I went straight for the single most expensive item on the menu, a platter full of various meats and BBQ side-dishes. And get this:  It was refillable. As was the chocolate shake I ordered.

Some of you might be thinking I probably looked like a fool for ordering so much food in front of two people I needed to make good impressions on, but don't worry - Tallant led the raid on the restaurant's kitchen by ordering the refillable milkshakes, and Rawlings was the one who actually suggested I order the refillable meat platter. We ate like kings. Well, Rawlings ate like a vegetarian king, and I ate like a king who intended to make the most of all the livestock spared by Rawlings's diet.

Did I mention that this meal came with a live show? Okay, it didn't come with a live show, but that's what it felt like. The waiters and waitresses there are literally the most boisterous in their profession - and they're paid precisely to behave that way. They'll mock you in front of the whole restaurant for asking for anything extra, from a refill on your drink to extra ketchup. Our waitress was the most boisterous of all:  a cantankerous old woman who gave hell to the poor saps next to us when they asked for more time to decide on the menu. She also made a point of telling the restaurant that Tallant had a mistress when he had to take a phone call in the middle of the meal.

It was hilarious, even more so because it's effectively the anti-Disney of customer service and guest relations. So should you ever decide to eat at the Whispering Canyon Cafe, be warned: your meal there will be anything but a whisper.

DUEE

The following Saturday, I arose at 6:00 am to go outside in my pajamas, sip a cup of coffee, and watch the sunrise.

I hope you're sensing the theme here.

Though that sounds peaceful and relaxing (but not quite as peaceful and relaxing as sleep), I had to get up at 6:00 that morning to attend Disney's Ultimate EnginEARing Exploration - DUEE! It's an all-day event designed to give interns a better sense of the opportunities that await them in an engineering career at Disney. Though it's geared more toward College Program students (CPs), Professional Interns (PIs) are also encouraged to apply for the event.

This year, DUEE was held at Epcot, where we started the day with a backstage tour of Maelstrom and Test Track, led by engineering professionals who talked to us about different aspects of engineering in the attractions. We got to see lots of stuff I already kinda knew, but also lots of great new things that I didn't know much about, like animatronics and the structural design of the buildings.

We then ate a fantastic lunch, catered by Disney's own cooks, including everything from caesar salad to mahi mahi to tiramisu. Another lunch in which I attempted to stuff myself such that I wouldn't need much of dinner that evening. When you're a college student, you learn to take advantage of situations when they're presented to you, especially buffet-style lunches full of delicious foods.

After lunch came the team project, in which we were divided into groups of four to five students: two mechanical engineers, one industrial, one electrical, and one structural. We were given the task of coming up with a plan for a new, weather-themed attraction for Epcot. It was a great exercise of creativity, and also of our teamwork and technical skills. Part of the challenge was that each student was given a packet of three discipline-specific problems, the answers to which were pertinent to the planning of our attraction. We then had to present our concept and also meet one-on-one with a professional Disney engineer from our discipline to explain our solutions to our individual technical problems.

After all our presentations - which were to a five-person board of Disney engineers, rather than to the entire group of students - we had the opportunity to network with a whole room of Disney engineers. They had two to three people representing each of the roughly twenty different departments in Disney that employed engineers, so we could just walk up to a table for a department that sounded interesting and chat away with the representatives!

I spent about 45 of our 60 minutes talking to the Simulation and Analysis group, who works to produce virtual models of anything that might be helpful to Disney. One man works on modeling traffic flow around Downtown Disney, another is in the process of modeling humans to help those who design character costumes, and a third models animatronics in order to evaluate fatigue in components over several years of running. It was way cool!

They then finished out the day with awards. They gave a certificate to each of individuals who had the best performances for their technical problems, as well as a few group awards for the best overall teams.

I received the award for the best technical score for the mechanical engineers, which was pretty cool! I was honored to be acknowledged like that in front of all the other students and professionals. We also received emails later this week with the board's comments on our individual performances in the group presentations, and mine were all very positive comments! They said I "led the charge" for the group presentation and did a nice job of picking up some of my teammates' slack in certain situations. Oh, and we all got pretty cool DUEE trading pins too!

It was a fun day, and I think I made lots of great impressions. Who knows whether they'll ever pay off at Disney, but regardless, making good impressions anywhere in the field of engineering can't be bad!

Back at the Ballpark

Well, as you all know, the Lame Duck session of sports came to a close a few weeks ago with the start of MLB spring training. Though I couldn't see the Dbacks play, I did at least get to go to a baseball game to celebrate the sport itself. My amazing and selfless girlfriend bought me a ticket to a Braves game; they play at the ESPN Wide World of Sports just twenty minutes away from my apartment!

It was so great to be back at a ballpark. Every time I go to a baseball game it brings back a flood of memories from my childhood of pitching and playing that timeless sport. That game was my life for almost nine years, before I developed elbow problems that ultimately lead to the end of my baseball "career." No regrets, though. The closing of that door opened an even better one, as I began to invest myself further than ever in playing the trombone, without which I would never have met the love of my life!

But I digress. After I arrived, I bought a bag of peanuts - no game is complete without a bag of peanuts - found my seat, and spent the next two and a half hours relaxing and watching some great baseball. It helped, of course, that the Braves played better than the Mets. The Upton brothers combined for a triple, a home run, and three scored runs, as Atlanta won 4-1. Such a great afternoon.

After that, my week was pretty generic! A nice surprise arrived in the mail from Choppie, who wrote me a letter and included some pretty sweet Harry Potter stamps. Which reminds me, a couple weeks ago Hannah's grandma's sister sent me a letter too! I like receiving snail mail. It feels genuine and sincere.

To celebrate the end of the week (because the end of every work week deserves some sort of celebration) Hannah and I spent all of Friday evening watching New Girl. It's one of our favorite sitcoms ever; we used to watch it all the time together back home, so now that we're 2000 miles apart, we each pull up Netflix on our own devices and press play at the same time so we can still watch it "together," texting each other comments on the scenes here and there. It works great!

We did, however, run into a bit of an issue. We finished the last episode of the second season last night, and though the show is still running, the third season isn't up on Netflix yet. So, until the third season arrives on Netflix, I'll be standing by the mailbox, happily awaiting all the letters you all are probably writing me this very instant.

Just kidding, don't you all go writing letters, or I'll have to respond to all of them. Having already spared the expense for stamps, I've depleted my letter-writing budget and can't afford paper with which to write them. I'll have to resort to stealing printer paper from work, and if I have too many letters to write, they'll get suspicious of where all the paper has gone.

Oh, and remember how Rawlings was supremely disappointed with my performance in the pi recital competition on Pi Day? Well I think my performance at DUEE made it up to him, so I don't seem quite so pathetic anymore.

... I may or may not have pinned the certificate to my cubicle wall with the sole intent of drawing his attention.

A Magical Weekend - Wait for It - Away From Disney

Every Engineer's Favorite Date

First of all, sorry this post took so long. It's been closer to two weeks instead of one, but this past weekend was too busy and fun for me to sit down and write! So, without further ado, let me tell you all about it.

Actually, one more thing, then the stories:  Most of you who read this blog were probably with me for a good portion of the weekend, so you may find that you have an exceptional ability to predict what's coming in this post. Just making sure you don't think you have ESP and go quit your job to pursue your newly realized ambition of fortune telling.

The weekend began on every engineer's favorite date (other than an extremely sexy and equivalently intelligent woman):  Pi Day. You might remember from last week that I was assigned the extremely important task of memorizing 30 digits of pi, so as to compete and kick butt in D&E's annual pi recital competition. To ensure the win and Rawlings's subsequent approval, I went above and beyond and memorized 51 digits of pi. Then I memorized 9 more because I was afraid my roommate had overheard me telling my parents I memorized 51, and would memorize just a couple more so he could beat me.

Clearly I was a bit paranoid. But I needed to win it for the Sustaining department! Unfortunately, I couldn't bring home the gold. Or the silver.

That afternoon, the contestants - all four of us - lined up, ready to recite the digits of pi one at a time, down the line until someone missed a digit. Well nobody missed one until digit 50. As that poor sap sat down, I began to panic; I only knew ten more digits and there were three of us left! But we restarted from the beginning, so maybe I'd get lucky and someone else would mess up prematurely.

Guess what? Someone did mess up prematurely, right around digit 30:  Me.

I lowered my head and made the walk of shame back to my seat, with Vince Guaraldi's sad piano tune from Charlie Brown Christmas accompanying me in my head. I mustered the confidence to look up at Rawlings, who smirked and shook his head. Guess I'll have to find another petty means of winning his approval.

Many of you might be wondering where exactly I found the time to memorize 51 - and eventually 60 - digits of pi. Well, Hannah's niece, Dayl (no, that's not her actual name) was turning three years old on Pi Day, which was also the day I was heading home to Arizona for the weekend. Since her party was the next day, I needed a present.

Paterna loves the new Disney film Frozen, especially the two princesses Anna and Elsa. What's more, it was going to be a Frozen-themed party, so what better than a Frozen-themed gift for the birthday girl? Working in Disney World, I knew I had to take advantage of the fact that I worked near all the Disney characters. So the Saturday before Pi Day, I headed to the Norway Pavilion at Epcot for a couple of princess signatures.

I knew that the wait for Anna and Elsa was usually two or more hours during the day. What I didn't know was that, even though I got there right as the park opened, I'd end up waiting for 3 hours and 15 minutes. Turns out there's a breakfast place in the Norway Pavilion that opens up a couple hours before the park opens; guests who finish eating can then go stand in line for Anna and Elsa, meaning those of us who arrive at park-open are all but the first in line.

By the way, Anna mistook me for an ice harvester. You know, those big beefy dudes with the low voices at the beginning of the movie? I mean, I can hardly blame her. I'm like Kristoff but without the "unmanly blondness."

So yes, I had a lot of time on my hands that morning. The funny thing is, I only spent about 20-30 minutes on memorizing the first 51 digits of pi. I also spent some time reading, thinking, and losing my enthusiasm my seemingly perfect idea for a gift. What's more, Francisco was supposed to be with me so that I wouldn't look like a creeper, standing in line to meet a couple princesses next to little girls just a fraction of my age. But he ended up sleeping in.

Thankfully the guy standing behind me (for his wife and young daughter, of course) was good to talk to. He'd actually done the Disney College Program back in the day, so we talked for awhile about the company and how things have changed over the past couple decades. Best of all, I could explain that I was getting a signature for my girlfriend's niece, so at least one person near me knew I wasn't a creep.

Best Weekend Ever

All of the waiting was worth it, though, once I was able to give the gift to Dayl. I included a picture of me with the princesses so that she'd understand better that I had met her favorite Disney characters, and I think it helped! (Credit for that idea goes to Hannah!)

In fact, the whole party was pretty awesome. There was a bounce house, which Hannah and I made good use of when the little kids were distracted. One of our friends and a fellow engineer, Sugar Daddy, decided to join us; he got a little bit too crazy and fell into one of the sides of the bounce house, sinking backward to the ground and pulling part of the bounce house back with him. Who knows what might have happened if Dayl's dad Búbble and I hadn't been there to save him!

On top of the bounce house, Búbble and Reeses (his wife) had a snow cone truck come and make us all snow cones, instead of a birthday cake! Brilliant! But most of all, the party was a perfect means for me to see all the friends and family I'd been missing for the past two months. I loved every minute of it.

Later that evening, my parents and Hannah and I went to one of my all-time favorite restaurants:  Oregano's. Of course, it's unique to the Phoenix valley, so I couldn't simply pop down to one for dinner here in Orlando. It was a delicious dinner, capped off with my own pizookie, which I finished without a bit of hesitation. My parents each had their own as well - awesome, right? - but Hannah simply had a bite or two of mine. We'll work on that.

After dinner we went to see Yakov Smirnoff's stand-up comedy at Chandler Center for the Arts. He was absolutely hilarious, and all the humor was very clean, which was refreshing compared to most stand-up comedy. He also just had some genuinely noble messages, which was pretty unique for his profession! I highly recommend him.

The following day, Hannah's family and I, along with Sugar Daddy and a few other family friends, played street hockey down by Choppie's house. It was a ton of fun, and half a dozen falls and five "game-winning" goals later, we drove down to Joe's Farm Grill for dinner. I got this delicious burger called the fontina burger, which had mushrooms, peppers, pesto, and fontina cheese on it. A very unique and very delicious meal! What's even cooler is Guy Fieri tried that burger himself when he came to Joe's for his show, Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives. So I guess we're pretty much spiked-hair, died-goatee, sports-car-driving bros now.

I finished off the evening by visiting two of my closest friends, Heavin. I refer to them using a single pseudonym for two reasons: (1) they're literally an inseparable couple, leading me to believe that they're physically joined to one another, making them one and the same person; and (2) they're names morph quite nicely into one. Though they're not as angelic a couple as their pseudonym might suggest.

Any way, Heavin and another friend of ours and I hung out for a few hours, just chatting and playing Mario Party 6. Then, when I came down to drive home around 12:30 am, I couldn't find my brother's truck that I'd been using to get around the valley for the weekend.

What you have to understand is that in the parking lot next to Heavin's apartment, there's a bunch of parking meters that have all been broken for an unknown length of time. All, that is, except for maybe two or three. And these meters are peculiar in that, when they're working and have money in them, they don't blink green, they're just dark - the same as when they're not working at all. So, when I pulled into the space and the meter wasn't blinking red, I assumed it was broken! Turns out there must've just been a bit of time left on it from the last person, because when I came down to where my car should have been at the end of the night, it was blinking red at me, teasing me for the trick it had played.

Conveniently, it was also right below the sign that gave information on the towing company responsible for removing cars from empty meters, so I gave them a call to make sure my car had truly been towed, rather than stolen. I found out that a dark gray Toyota Tundra had "literally just come in," and that I could come pick it up immediately for a nominal fee of $170.

So I called my amazing friends who had just went to bed, and just a few minutes later Heavin came down to take me downtown and pick up my brother's truck. Though it was annoying paying such a large fee for probably only 30 minutes of the tow company's business, I was thankful it had been towed and not stolen. And it also reminded me how great my friends are! So still a great evening, in my book.

I finished the weekend with a fun afternoon of St. Patrick's Day bowling with my mom, brother, grandparents, and Hannah. I started out with a solid 160, though didn't come very close to that promising first score for the rest of the afternoon. After a delicious home-cooked dinner with my family, Hannah and I watched The Hunger Games:  Catching Fire, since we hadn't seen it in theaters, and ended the night with a couple rounds of Scattergories. It was a great, relaxing day to end my blissful trip home.

Back to Work

It was tough to come back to Florida on Tuesday. Last weekend was a like a little teaser of how great it'll be to come home in August and see everyone regularly again. But it should be a good next few weeks! Splash Mountain is gonna open up to guests again in just a couple days, and today Rawlings and I got to ride it ourselves while they cycled the logs through the ride! I can't wait for my family to come in late April so we can all ride it together. It's not the same without them.

Ironic that my most magical weekend so far has been my first away from Disney World. But I guess that just goes to show that family and friends are the fundamentally magical thing about Disney; without them, Disney isn't quite as powerful. In my opinion, at least.

And Dayl, by the way, is an exceptionally good hugger.

Same Title as Last Week

Ready for School Again?

Let's face it:  making hundreds of dollars a week at the Happiest Place on Earth is pretty cool. But I miss my friends, and I miss the college atmosphere. Heck, I almost even miss taking classes!

Or do I?

As I found out last weekend, the School of Music at ASU requires that non-music majors who take music classes, officially register for those courses. Trombone choir is a 1 credit class, which means that my 19 credit hour course load had to be bumped to 20 credit hours. One problem:  my college only allows a course load of 19 credit hours.

Learning that I hit the limit of credit hours kinda opened my eyes to the fact that this fall is gonna be my most difficult semester yet. I mean look at my classes!

World Music and Trombone Choir won't be too difficult, but the others sure sound intimidating. Thermofluids II? Structural Mechanics? Applied Experimental Statistics? Heck, the lady who approved my petition even felt the need to warn me about the difficulty of this large course load. But I'm up for the challenge! I'll just make sure I treasure these next few months of getting paid to work forty hours a week, rather than paying an institution to work on homework about the same amount of time.

Thankfully, this week's forty hours went pretty smoothly. Starting Tuesday, Rawlings went on vacation for a week and won't be back to work till next Wednesday. Party at the office!!

... If you consider solid mechanical analysis a party. That's what I've been doing all week:  learning how to use Solidworks to analyze the stress and strain put on a system as it's loaded by external forces and pressures. It may not sound like a party, but it's actually been very interesting! Besides, the results from my analysis are very colorful, and every day for lunch we all sat down and watched Drew Carey feign sympathetic enthusiasm on The Price is Right, so it may as well have been a college frat party.

In all seriousness, though, it was a great week. No Rawlings meant no night shifts or boring meetings; on the flip side, it meant four days of just sitting on my computer, learning new parts of Solidworks while listening to classical music on my phone. A relaxing week, indeed.

Rawlings did assign me a very important project before he left, though. Apparently ever year, on Pi Day (March 14th), the Design & Engineering department holds a pie/pi-themed celebration. It consists of two parts:  a pie-making contest and a pi-reciting contest. The interns from the Sustaining department have a bit of a reputation for kicking butt at the pi-reciting contest, and I can't be the one who tarnishes it. Rawlings told me to study up; he said the first 30 digits should be enough.

I can't take any chances, though. There could be another mentor in Quality Assurance telling his own intern the same thing. So, as of this morning, I have the first 51 digits memorized. Bring it on, hypothetical intern from QA!!

The Magic Continues

As you'll recall, last week's post ended with my thoughts on how Disney and food were both such magical things. That theme continues this week! And in the case of the latter, it's the reason for the title of this week's post.

First, the Disney magic. Francisco and I went to both Epcot and the Magic Kingdom last Saturday; both were open a couple hours later than usual, so we had to take advantage of that! On our way to the monorail station, though, we stopped and looked around at the Grand Floridian, since I'd never been inside before.

It is gorgeous. And classy. When you pass through the doors, your wallet turns into a pocketbook, your watch into a pocket watch, and your cigarette into a Cuban cigar. There's even a little jazz band on the second floor of the lobby, dressed in gray suits, playing low-key, relaxing jazz to polish off the whole experience. They've got a string bass, a clarinet - the whole classy shabang.

That's not all, though. Also on the second floor reside a handful of classy shops and stores, not unlike the ones you'd find in the Venetian in Vegas. Not those cheesy Disney stores with all the bright, touristy souvenirs; no, these are Disney stores with golf polos, jewelry, and other classy means of spending money.

As I walked out, I had to pull the tip of my nose back down to its original position; then, it was off to the Magic Kingdom! We watched all three shows that evening, including Wishes, Celebrate the Magic, and the Main Street Electrical Light Parade. It was a lot of fun, and good for me because I hadn't seen either of those last two yet. Though my family's not much for the shows and parades, I really did enjoy these.

Which reminds me, Disney World's bringing a brand new parade to the Magic Kingdom, and it premiers this coming Sunday! Exciting stuff, for you Disney buffs. I've actually seen them rehearsing it a bit back behind Splash Mountain and Big Thunder, but not with full costumes, so it'll be cool to see the real thing next week (hopefully).

As we were waiting for the Electrical Parade to begin, I saw something else I'd never seen before - though it wasn't especially magical. A frog, or maybe it was a toad, about four inches long came hopping right up to me! I've never seen a frog in real life before, probably because Arizona is so arid. The way they hop around is pretty interesting, but honestly, they're pretty unattractive creatures. And slimy looking.

Now, on to the food-related magic! A few weeks back my mom sent me a recipe for samoa bars; they're basically a thin layer of yellow cake, toped with chocolate, caramel, samoa cookies, and sweetened/condensed milk.

Having not made any desserts since my birthday cake in January (I think I'm finally done digesting that monster) I decided to make these samoa bars last Sunday. They turned out to be delicious, and extremely addicting. As in, Lucky Charms needs to hand over their copyright on the "magically delicious" catch phrase. I've been eating them all week, pretty much on my own... Hence this week's title.

In addition, Hannah's sister, Choppie (there's two of them, so to clarify, Choppie is the older one; Peanuts is the younger) recommended I try a sub from the local grocery store chain, Publix. I did just that on Sunday for lunch, and I'm glad I did! It was delicious, and I'm looking forward to trying another one this week! They're pretty big, too; I got two meals out of it that day. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of it... So picture something along the lines of the Firehouse sub from last week's post.

While I'm on the topic of food, there's one other thing I forgot to mention last week when I was talking about the magic of pizza. It only occurred to me as I was clearing my dishes that I rounded off my five slices of pizza and half a sandwich with a big glass of milk. That's right, all you Warrens, I drink milk with my pizza and I'm not afraid to admit it, despite your heckling.

And if any of the rest of you think it's weird to drink milk with pizza... Well, as my favorite quarterback might say, you can "shove that one where the sun don't shine."